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Is Japan Preparing For War?

February 18, 2015

Is Japan Preparing For War?

Back on October 7, 1940, more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum in his capacity as director of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Far East Asia section, drafted what is now known as the “Eight Action Memo” (which can be read in its entirety here) to FDR in which he recommended an eight-part course of action for the United States to take in regard to the Japanese Empire in the South Pacific, suggesting the United States provoke Japan into committing an overt act of war.

Explicitly, in the memo McCollum said that “It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado.” Which leaves one option: force Japan to declare war on the US: “If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of War.”

How would the US accelerate this plan to have Japan declare war on it? Simple: by collapsing the Japanese economy sufficiently, to where a crippled Japan would stand to lose little by declaring war on the US. Some of the specific steps planned in advance:

  • Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.
  • Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
  • Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

In other words, the plan was to “entrap” Japan to declare war on the US – a declaration which the US would have long anticipated – which would then allow America to engage Europe and Hitler as part of its broader entry into World War II from which it had been previously separated.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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